


Collect Two Hundred Dollars

by tuesday



Category: Spelunky
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:33:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28311660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesday/pseuds/tuesday
Summary: The first time Spelunky died, he thought that was it.  He'd misjudged the strength of his legs and the length of the pit.  The mines clamored to claim another victim.  Maybe some fresh new enterprising adventurer would find his body down among the spikes.  Maybe they'd join him.  Game over.  Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Collect Two Hundred Dollars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ysavvryl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ysavvryl/gifts).



The first time Spelunky died, he thought that was it. He'd misjudged the strength of his legs and the length of the pit. The mines clamored to claim another victim. Maybe some fresh new enterprising adventurer would find his body down among the spikes. Maybe they'd join him. Game over. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.

He opened his eyes to the little cavern he'd dropped into when his rope ran out. He was disconcertingly alive, the cave floor cold and hard under him. Confused, cautious, he pushed himself up. Maybe it was a dream? Or some sort of vision? He dusted off the dirt from his clothes and carved a mark into the cave wall like he was marking the days.

When he walked into the mines proper, he half-expected the same layout he'd seen before. There was no snake to greet him. The drop to the next ledge down was shorter than he remembered. A pot stood invitingly at the edge where before there'd only been empty air.

"Just a dream," he said, a little bit relieved, a little bit disappointed. He had no special insights into how the mine would go, just the small bits of information he'd been able to glean before starting his expedition.

All the same, Spelunky treated his dream as half-premonition. He checked and double-checked his possible landings. He was careful of spikes. He took his time, determined to do this right. When he heard screams, he followed them, and found a buff, barely dressed man wearing only a tiny scrap of fabric. Spelunky tried not to flush too badly as he carried the man to the exit. The first level took him only a couple minutes even with the detour.

On the second level, he found a couple crates with more rope and bombs. An angry brute of a man came charging at him, and he escaped up a ladder just in time to avoid his raging fists. Spelunky let him tire himself out. Eventually, he seemed to forget Spelunky existed, and Spelunky waited for his back to turn before descending the ladder and hurrying away. Once he was out of sight, he resumed his previous cautious pace. A bat came at his face, and he slapped it out of the air with his whip.

This wasn't so bad. Certainly not enough to warrant a nightmare. There was a little cavern with a set of ledges each set with a gem, and he took the time to hop his way up, then once again when he missed his handhold and fell back onto the wider ledge below it.

He was making his fourth attempt to get that last ruby when he felt a chill in the air. There must be an opening to the surface somewhere around here to get that terrible draft going. Spelunky shivered and told himself he could try to make a fire once he was done here, warm up a little. Just one more try—

The fourth time he slipped, it was right into a large, glowing ghost's grasp. It catching him was not a kindness.

—

Spelunky sat upright with a horrible gasping breath, the floor cold and hard underneath him. Across from him, etched carefully into the wall, was a single damning mark he remembered carving himself.

"Not a dream," he said thoughtfully. Not a premonition either. He gave the mark a friend. He readjusted his hat, checked his whip was attached to his belt, and walked back into the first level of the mines.

—

The marks added up quickly. Spelunky had learned his lesson about being slow, and only so much care could be taken at speed.

Spelunky dropped on more spikes. He got beaten up by a caveman. He got bitten by a snake. He dropped down a snake pit and failed to catch any ledges on the way down. He met a very, very big spider and did not survive the experience. He accidentally shoplifted a cape he'd meant to purchase, and an angry shopkeeper shot him to death.

Every time, he woke up at the entrance to the mines.

Either he was immortal or purgatory was weirder than he'd ever imagined. He was given second chance after second chance.

The mines were different whenever he entered them, never quite repeating. There were commonalities. He always found the first shopkeeper on the same floor. Every level had a dude, damsel, or dog in distress, and they were all extremely grateful if he managed to save them. (He did not always manage to save them. Some of them were safer left in their sealed in little caverns they were crying out from.) Every so often, he came across an ominous altar. There were special levels that also changed layouts, but were mostly the same in their terribleness. Darkness, spiders, and, worst of all, snakes, so many snakes.

Eventually, he got the hang of it.

When he finally emerged from the mines out into the light of an underground jungle, grinning with triumph, he managed five steps before some sort of ambulatory carnivorous plant ate him.

—

The mines got easier. The jungle—the jungle was much harder. The dark levels were hard enough with bats and spiders and snakes. Piranhas, man-eating plants, and men lurking the jungle prepared to throw their torches at his head only added to the difficulty. He made it to the fourth level one time, only to drop in a large underground lake and discovered that like the spiders, the piranhas came in a much bigger form. Much, much bigger. The piranha king swallowed him whole.

Some deaths later (as deaths were the only way he had to determine the passing of time), he made a special discovery. It wasn't the first time he'd found a graveyard in the jungle. It wasn't even the first time he'd done a little light grave-digging in said graveyard. It was the first time that he meant to cast a rope, just inside the king's tomb he'd already raided, and dropped a bomb instead. He managed to get the rope up and up that rope in time, narrowly escaping the explosion, then looked down to see if the unexpected destruction had unearthed any hidden gems, only to find a second exit.

The safe thing to do would be to ignore it. Safety had long since stopped being a concern.

Spelunky dropped down to the new door and walked through it.

—

There was a hidden castle! It shut itself up behind him, trapping him inside. There was another of those ominous altars and a man in armor running around crushing everything around him with his shield. Spelunky dropped a few more bombs—on purpose this time, though with the impetus of the sort of panic that usually saw him die five seconds later. For once, he survived! The man in armor didn't, his armor blowing off to reveal one of those cave men he remembered from the mines.

Spelunky wasn't exactly taking his time, but he thought he had time enough to explore, see if there were any waiting dogs or damsels. They always made him feel better, and he could use the shot of courage. Instead, he found a shaking coffin upstairs. When he freed the occupant, he found a grizzled man in mutton chops.

The man gestured threateningly for a second before he checked himself and said, "You're not a vampire."

"Not that I'm aware of," Spelunky said.

"Thank you for freeing me! My name is Van Helsing. Did you need assistance?" Van Helsing looked surprisingly sprightly for someone who'd been trapped inside a coffin for who knew how long.

Spelunky thought of that shield he'd left downstairs, as he couldn't carry both it and the shotgun he'd liberated from someone's grave last level. "Actually. If you're willing—"

Van Helsing was willing. Spelunky was pleased to have his assistance right up until the moment Van Helsing got a little too enthusiastic in his monster crushing and crushed Spelunky, too.

—

Van Helsing wasn't the last person Spelunky found trapped in a coffin. A number of fellow explorers found themselves trapped and somehow managed to avoid drawing the attention of a hungry ghost.

He finally made his way out of the jungle and met a young woman smartly bundled up in preparation for the ice caverns that had followed. He left a damsel on a strange ledge for but a moment and, when he heard a rumbling and jumped up to rescue him from whatever was making that sound, got swallowed whole by a huge worm—and instead of dying, found another strange fellow made of meat suffering through this variation of Jonah and the whale, and they escaped the worm's stomach together. He freed a cyclops from the market and discovered a friendly robot in a spaceship.

He didn't keep any of his new friends with him for long, but it was nice to meet others with the same sense of adventure.

"I've heard there's a city of gold out there," one of them said wistfully moments before they tumbled off a ledge and fell into the endless abyss of the ice caverns.

A city of gold, huh? Spelunky added it to the list of mysteries he wanted to solve.

First, though, he was going to follow that sound of chanting.

—

Spelunky didn't find that city of gold, but he did eventually make it through to the exit to the outside. A giant golden idol squashed him a time or two (or twenty-seven) first.

It should've been a relief to be out in the open air. In a way, it was a relief. A triumph. Newly drafted minions carried golden idol out of the desert for him, and there was joy in the feeling of the sun beating down on him for the first time in what must have been years. Still, there was a part of him that thought—what would it look like, that city of gold?

He went back to the city and lived out a long, happy, comfortable life on the spoils of his expedition, having sold that gold statue for a small fortune. When he died, it wasn't due to snakes or spiders or yet more spikes from a misjudged jump. It was of old age, in his sleep.

It was a good death, wasn't it? It was the sort of death one could be satisfied with.

—

He woke up on a cold, hard cave floor.

He looked at all the marks he'd carved into the cave walls. He smiled to himself. Maybe for someone else this would be an unhappy ending, but for him? This time, he wanted to do it better, faster, come out with more money for a better retirement. This time, he was going to mine the place for every last secret.

He couldn't wait to get started.


End file.
